NAWABZADA NASRULLAH KHAN During his lifetime, Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan was a consistent voice of dissent and a crusading democrat against authoritarian regimes. Such regimes feared him more than any other opposition leader because of his uncanny ability to unite diverse parties around the fundamentals of the rule of law, the constitution, and the right of people to govern themselves. Born into a feudal family of Khangarh in 1918, he was sent to the elite Aitchison College, Lahore in 1928 where he continued to study till 1933. His entry into politics came through joining a religiously inclined, but anti- colonial political party, Majlis-e-Ahrar, the same year. He was also present in the annual session of the All India Muslim League on March 23, 1940 in which the famous Lahore Resolution, which later came to be known as Pakistan Resolution, was passed. After independence, he switched over to the Muslim League, from whose platform he successively won 1952 provincial and 1962 national assembly elections. It was during General Ayub Khan's military rule (1958-69) that he started to make his mark on national politics. He joined the opposition party, Jinnah Awami League, which was later on renamed as Awami League. He was selected as its vice president when Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardi was the president of the party. He strongly supported Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah in the Presidential Elections of 1964 against Ayub Khan. Disenchanted by the heavy-handed dictatorial regime, he set about gathering together all opposition parties under one banner. His first foray into building an opposition coalition resulted in the highly effective Democratic Action Committee, which prepared the ground for the fall of the seemingly solidly entrenched Ayub Khan in a popular uprising. The success of this alliance turned out to be a role model for other pro-democracy movements that he later became involved in. In 1969, he founded his own party with the collaboration of four other parties and named it as Pakistan Jamhuri Party. Nawabzada's next crack at alliance-building came in 1977 in the shape of the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA) against the first democratically elected government of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. In the elections of 1977, he was elected as the Member National Assembly but following the party policy, refused to take oath. He was one of those politicians who negotiated with the PPP government for holding new elections. However, unfortunately, when the government and the PNA had reached an agreement to hold fresh elections, General Zia-ul-Haq imposed martial law. Nawabzada initially allowed his party to join General Zia's regime, but he soon started realising the true nature of the authoritarian regime and wasted no time in distancing himself from it. In the 1980s, Nawabzada began assembling democratic forces to challenge the regime. This resulted in the formation of the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD), which developed into a highly successful grassroots pro-democracy movement. In 1983, the MRD launched a successful countrywide civil disobedience movement that was ruthlessly suppressed by the regime. Thousands were killed or imprisoned, and Nawabzada had to remain under house arrest for around 5 years. Owing to the momentum created by the MRD movement, and few other factors, General Zia had to lift Martial Law in 1985. After his demise, elections were held in 1988 in which Nawabzada was also elected as Member National Assembly. Once again, he chose to sit on opposition benches in the Benazir Bhutto’s PPP-led government. He even participated in the presidential election of 1988 in which Ghulam Ishaq Khan came out victorious by securing 348 of the 446 votes cast by an electoral college consisting of both houses of the Parliament and the assemblies of Pakistan's four provinces, whereas Nawabzada received 91 votes. However, he made up with Ms. Bhutto during her second term of office in 1993 and became Chair of the Kashmir Committee, travelling widely to publicise the Kashmir issue. His final act as an anti-establishment figure was the formation of the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD) in 2000 against General Musharraf who had seized power in a military coup a year earlier. However, to the General’s good fortune, even before the alliance could have threatened his regime, Nawabzada breathed his last on September 26, 2003 in Shifa International Hospital of Islamabad, following a heart attack. Though Nawabzada was more known as a politician, he was a man of letters too. Not only he was a poet himself, and produced 2 volumes of his poetry, but also remembered hundreds of other verses, both Urdu and Persian, by heart. He had a distinctive appearance with a dark achkan, Turkish cap and a huqqa. He did his politics from a sitting room in his modest house on Nicholson Road in Lahore, where he held meetings and met visitors for many years. True to Muzaffargarh and southern Punjab traditions, his gift of mangoes used to reach houses of politicians and other prominent persons of all shades of opinion every summer. Nawabzada was a political leader of the highest calibre and the last of the old breed of politicians who stood for principles, civility, tolerance and democratic values. Above all, he was a great human being. With his demise in 2003, that chapter of our political history has been closed for ever. Embodiment of simplicity and humility, he continues to live in the hearts of people of Pakistan. Muzaffargarh feels immensely proud to have produced such a son of the soil. Conferment of ‘Nishan-e-Muzaffargarh’ posthumously on him during Shan-e-Muzaffargarh Awards 2019 may not have done any good to him but enhanced the prestige and credibility of the award itself.